Shakespeare and Gender in Practice

As as all-female Shakespeare company, we know all about breaking gender barriers. It’s what defines us. Indeed, one of the reasons we formed the company was to allow us – as women – to explore such traditionally male roles as Macbeth, Henry, and Hamlet. We also saw it as a fun little spin on the fact that women were forbidden by law to perform on Elizabethan stages.

Chickspeare™ is honored to be included in the upcoming Shakespeare and Gender in Practice by Terri Power, available January 1, 2016. A part of the Shakespeare in Practice series, it “explores theoretical and practical approaches to performing gender in contemporary Shakespeare productions. It focuses on contemporary practice, looking at how it is responding to a new cultural politics of gender and creating a critical language for understanding the performing of gender in the staging of Shakespeare’s plays.”

Chickspeare™ is but a small cog in the world of Shakespeare yet strives to pave the way for other theatre companies to break gender stereotypes in Charlotte and beyond, Shakespearian or otherwise. Shakespeare wrote, “This above all; to thine ownself be true.” We will, if nothing else, be true, to both ourselves and the Bard himself.